The largest revenue stream is not the same as the only revenue stream.

Plus you can only spend up to the cap on players regardless of how much money you have.

Pointless!

What?



You asked how the Giants could afford decent players with lowered revenue from pass holders. I pointed out that pass holders are not the only revenue stream available, and it's entirely possible to generate enough cash to spend the full cap while making only modest amounts from pass sales.

The irony is that our two clubs are good examples. Hull have significantly larger crowds and many more pass holders, but Rovers spend the same amount on players.

Mmm...tough one this.
I had been a union player from the age of 11 and fan as far back as I can remember. I Played Union to a fairly high standard and was brought up on the 5 (6) nations. I was hassled to go to a broncos game in 2002 and to be fair, I only knew they existed because the guy who hassled me worked with me and the fact that they had started playing 50 yrds from my front door in Brentford.
The determination of that (still ST holder who travels from Stevenage) got me through the doors....and the rest as they say is history. I have not been back to London Irish since and have only attended RU internationals when they were freebies.
So, given that I am a sports fan, am I unique in being introduced and converted to league or is it just that NOBODY KNOWS WE EXIST?
I still think it's because nobody knows we exist and that is something to be ashamed of

but I'm sure I've read on here that Quins only sold a handful of executive boxes all season last year, they've ran without a main sponsor for many years, and I can't imagine Queen Mary uni is paying a fortune. You can't imagine they have many fans to sell merchandise to either...so i can't see what other significant streams of income they have to be honest.

FWIW£1,200,000 SKY
3,800 (avg 200icon_cool.gif at £10 a pop £380,000
An average of £40 per home fan (2,000 appx) on stuff from the shop over the season £80,000 (I spent about £300 last year alone)
£750,000 from Sports Cafe (Lennegan)

so, with no profit counted from ale and food sales, corporate boxes, other minor sponsors, match day sponsorship etc etc..., that gives an income of £2,400,000.......

I am sure Leeds and Hull have a much bigger turn over, but 2.4 million isn't too shabby.

everyone has the 1.2million though

and whilst I'm sure the loyal fans you do have do spend a lot of money on merchandise, Hull are now turning over 1million a year in just merchandise alone (and im sure Wigan and Leeds do just as much)

I just feel overall they are going to get left behind, especially if more teams finally get their new grounds (to bring them on a par with the Stoop)

True...we will suffer on merchandise sales and othe residuals, but we have one thing in abundance that all of the Traditional clubs struggle between themselves for........a massive catchment area. LMS (and to a certain extent Tony Clubb) would stroll into the majority of teams in SL at the moment. We are suffering with crowds (please feel free to read all my marketing based rants when you have a spare month

) but we are getting it right in other areas. Read the [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/apr/16/celtic-crusaders-harlequins-salford-catalans7th[/url paragraph. It may not be much to shout about in the north, but 300 odd is a step in the right direction. We are developing an identity as Harlequins Rugby League now and it can only get better.

the youth development is the biggest positive of the whole club, you just have to hope that the club can survive long enough to bear the fruits of its youth development (Ie the current crop reach 25-30 and peak)

the other issue seems to be the amount of Quins fans who seem unhappy with your boards lack of marketing and the whole 'everyone in 1 stand' thing, you really cannot lose many more 'diehards' and survive.

Agree 100% and I think the club might just know my feelings about this

.

The Kids are already coming through. O'Callaghan (played and scored against the PROPER Manly team) was born about 5 miles from the Stoop......as were a fair few of our reserves and academy players. It won't be long before we are in a position to play 17 Londoners......and the conveyerbelt is looking pretty good as well.

ok , were averaging just under 10,000 this season.
approx 5,500 season TICKET holders, approx average of 1,200 away fans = nearly 4,000 on the day fans.
A core support i would say of 6-7000 fans.
call it 8500-9000 giants fans - buying things like match day programmes, replica shirts, lottery tickets, merchandise etc etc then i think that just possibly may blow your theory that we rely on Away support !

and on the issue of how we can afford decent players - its called our coach who has coached these players into being decent players - not to mention the ones we have 'raised' ourselves.

if you want to have a pop at the Giants make sure your argument is relevant to 2009 and not 1999 please.

something needs to be done about quins crowds, they are supposed to be a top flight club.
Id be happy to see the rfl give special funding to london and cc to support better awareness raising. their crowds are embarrassing the game imo.

You'll obviosly have a better grasp of the 'marketing' for want of a better word, though from my own experience of being in the capital (I've worked/lived down there for a short while, know the Kingston area quite well, and still have a fair few friends dotted around the capital), the impression I always got is that most sports fans know about RL but it comes way down the list of 'interesting things to do at the weekend'.

One interesting (but equally disappointing) comment from a close friend who lives in Erith was 'they're making my boy play your poxy northern game at school when all he wants to do is play football'



Yes, there is bigotry from Union fans, there is football, there is a massive amount of non English people there who wouldn't know a rugby ball from a medicine ball.

But there is a reason the daily papers and regional media down there dont have as much coverage of the game as we would like, and its not just because the Editors are toffee nosed rugger buggers.

Is the market there? You would think so; if they can fill Wembley for a game of glorified tick and pass with crash hats on, and fill Twickenham for the opening of an envelope, then I don't see why not. But either someone isn't marketing it correctly or there is very limited interest.

After 20-odd years, SL exposure, and a CC Final I honestly think its the latter and I dont get any satisfaction from it either.

Are you for real?

yeah ! work it out sunshine - ask someone from West Hull to help you if its too hard for ya .

Does anybody else think the faux-concern bordering obsession of RL’s parochial tendency with attendances in London is what’s most embarrassing to RL? It creates the impression of RL as a petty, parochial sport. I’m not aware of Arsenal fans winding themselves up into a mock frenzy because attendances at Portsmouth, Wigan or Blackburn are a third of those at the Emirates. Nor am I aware of RU fans getting so obsessed about other clubs crowds, although perhaps these other sports are more self-confident and less inhibited by small time parochial concerns?

As has already been pointed out by the smarter contributors to this thread, an obsession with headline attendances carries limited information about revenue streams and the cost base. Everyone knows that Quins RL need better attendances, those who pay attention, or have been following the club for some time will be aware of many barriers in the way, just pointing out the bleedingly obvious goes nowhere.

But the big question remains; does anybody from the parochial tendency seriously believe that RL can survive as a modern fully professional sport by pursuing a “back to the heartlands, local sport for local people” strategy?

nah......it's just coz northeners have small c0cks


HTH

anyone who's been to our ground would not be surprised if we made a fair amount of wedge from our bars

steady on fella



i'll see yours and raise you 5

For me, not at all, and I broadly agree with your sentiments. (However the bigger embarrasment to me is nigh on 15 years Sky funding has still not produced an British half back/full back/centre/hooker/loose forward that would walk into any Aussie side but thats another story).

Anyway, do you think Quins can survive in SL on regular gates of 2-3000 should the likes of Ian Lenegan finally reliquish his/their involvment and what happens to the game as a whole if you can't?

Perhaps that is some of the concern that people have.

There is a lot riding on the 'expansion' clubs, whether folk wanted them or not or agree with the prinicples established is now irrelevant; they are here and they need to stay otherwise the game ends up with egg on its face.

I'd be interested to know who many of the fall in Quins attendances is accredited to away supporters choosing to have weekends away elsewhere.

I mean with Catalans coming in, the Magic Weekend being introduced and a return of the Cup Final to Wembley since they moved back to The Stoop a trip to Quins as well is perhaps a finiancal weekend too far.

None of those help Harlequins cause. I mean if you had the choice of a weekend in Perpignan or a weekend in London? It's no contest really. Hot sun every time! Now they have Celtic to contend with for weekends away as well. Tough for them.

I think you have a very good point, the novelty of a weekend in London has been declining for a few years. The other aspect is that we rely on a certain number of games under certain conditions i.e. we need to play the likes of Saints, Leeds and Wigan on a Saturday afternoon, not on Sky and preferably without any major sporting events clashing. If we get that it drags up our average, if we don't it drags it down. We can reasonably expect 3.5k for all other games excluding other expansion clubs.

It's also worth pointing out here that it's not simply a matter of getting visiting fans in for those key games, it's as much about getting casual fans based in the South East in. We'll get casual fans in for a game against a team like Saints that we wouldn't get in for a game against 10 or so other clubs.

I got that bored yesterday I started counting the HKR fans in the north stand. There were approximately 550...with another 100 scattered in the East.
This figure is well down on last year. This could be the Credit Crunch or the Catalan Crusader Crunch or a combination of both, but the bottom line is that we shouldn't EVER have to rely on away fans to boost our gates.

I have just posted on the Quins Board that we are £32k+ down on ticket revenues compared to 2005 over just 3 games (Wigan/FC/Wire).......and no business can afford to lose cash like that.
All I will say is that we are very lucky that points for attendance figures are not that important in the franchise/licence applications, because we are heading for an average of about 3,000 a game this year...which even I will find hard to defend.

I agree, but to an extent I think Quins benefit from the 'Northern sport's' lack of self-confidence in its northerness. There is a perception that we need London to succeed. I want it, but I'm not sure we need it. Fans of Quins RU, Saracens, London Irish and Wasps don't think much about the lack of a Yorkshire club in the GP, every second season, I bet.

Maybe it was just because the sun was shining and we won, but I couldn't find much to fault in the matchday experience yesterday. £15 to get in, good view of the action and a nice atmosphere. Maybe franchizing (and being northern

) has made us too ready to focus on the negatives - especially fans of C-grade clubs, nervous about renewal.

What do Quins fans think, roughly, they need to be getting through the gate to remain financially viable? Realistically, what sort of numbers do you think are achievable in the short-medium term.

5000 should be the target....once we get that we will find it easier to add extras. impossible to predict when we will get there as we have no marketing department or budget